


Faeries' Ring

by ultragayest



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, POV Second Person, and only very lightly edited bc i'm dying with music directing atm, didn't really start as an eu fic but it sort of... fit? i guess?, inspired by a super cool ring i've owned for a few years now, or rather i made it fit, written almost two years ago as like a spur of the moment thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 17:47:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17750582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultragayest/pseuds/ultragayest
Summary: You're raised on traditions and tales of the Fair Folk, knowing from a young age what places and things to avoid, what things to show reverence to. You're always careful.Still, you feel yourself drawn to Elsewhere.-------------An exploration of "Archie's" time at Elsewhere University, houses and all.





	Faeries' Ring

**Author's Note:**

> well would you look at that,,, a fic i forgot i wrote abt elsewhere university literally two years ago  
> eagle-eyed viewers might remember seeing this reblogged but it's here now with a whole two (2) updated lines enjoy

From the beginning, you know what you're getting into.

Raised on Irish traditions and tales of the Fair Folk, you grow up carefully avoiding fairy rings and treating nature with an almost reverent air. Every few weeks you'll gather up all of the vines and leaves and fresh flowers you can find - never, _ever_ stealing from bushes or nearing that one, shimmering part of the forest in your search - and build small houses for whomever and whatever may wish to rest there. Each night you leave out small offerings - a pretty bead you find at school, a crystal you buy at the museum, and a homemade raspberry-lemonade cupcake among them - and some mornings, something new awaits you in return.

Even when you're little, it's obvious that the best course of action is to hold on to these treasures, for safety's sake. And so you do, tucking each one in an antique jewelry box that you take with you wherever you travel. One of these such gifts stays on your person at all times: a large ring, dried flowers suspended in the glass center, with an intricate weaving of silver branches and colorful stones lining the edges. You find it tucked on the lip of a fallen rose petal on a chill March morning, taking the place of the tiny replica of a Lady Gouldian finch made in your art class - you haven't had time to leave anything in a while, so this offering is something more intricate, more special. You wear the ring now on the middle finger of your dominant hand, showing that you did indeed win favor with some of Them without being all too obvious about it.

After all, the Fair Folk can be indecisive (though you’d never say this aloud). It can be difficult to tell if they will simply appreciate you wearing this token or if they might take it as an invitation to involve you in something you want no part of. So you keep it on most hours of most days, even when you sleep, twisting it and turning it and rubbing your thumb across the smooth glass whenever you grow nervous. It only comes off once in a blue moon, when you wake up to the stones glittering and shining in the pitch darkness, the air around you seeming to buzz. That’s when you rip the ring off and set it down carefully on your bedside table — you’re frightened but not so much that you lose all common sense — with the glass and stones pointing away from you.

At school, you still start your day with an offering - now usually one of vanilla creamer, or some shiny bauble that catches your fancy at the dollar store - and you still make an effort to build houses, though that at first is habit more than anything else. The Fair Folk, as you come to know, can be far larger than your childhood imagination led you to believe, but they seem to appreciate the gesture nonetheless. Your best days always come in the week or so following the construction of a new house, before it's destroyed by weather or raucous parties thrown by who- or whatever takes a liking to them, and in that time you leave a pouch of your favorite loose-leaf tea on the stoop (you find them to be especially fond of the berry-orange-honey white and red blend, though you try to rotate flavors to avoid boring any potential guests). You've learned to always do this come finals.

Students come to you sometimes, asking how you do it - how you seem so well-favored, how you stay so safe, how, even when you did take a "vacation," you came back sprightly and hardly changed at all - and you never have much to tell them. You give them advice, sure, tell them what you've learned in the past just-over-two decades of your life, but so many of them just laugh and turn away, young and carefree and maybe just there to poke fun at the undergrad who spends her weekends shopping for flowers and sketching out plans for the grandest home imaginable, just in case.

You know, though. You see it in the iron clasps that find their places around those students' necks and hear it in the hushed tones of them asking themselves, _but what if she's right?_ And as for those who don't show any signs - well, you like to think that They would be lenient, but when they suddenly start eating a little too healthily and avoiding group selfies, you know. You'll pull out something special as an offering that night, something tied to the person (be it a pair of earrings or a favorite cake recipe), and add on to whatever house is currently sitting in your garden. Sometimes they return and sometimes they don't, and sometimes there's a headband sitting there come morning, or a lone left sock - being honest, the results tend to be more dependent on the student's major than anything else - and you have to debate breaking the news to their roommate or just letting things be. But at least the renovated housings and special offerings earn you a bit more reputation, a bit more respect.

Newer students seem convinced you're actually one of Them - who else could be so in the know, or would dare live in the one, virtually abandoned dorm with the gnarled apple tree casting shadows across the windows? - but the sophomores and above know you. They call you Archie, short for architect (a name you come to accept - you're no architect major, but at least the name doesn't make your actual major immediately obvious); some even give flowers and trinkets for you to use when you're about to begin building. You appreciate it - after all, you're a broke college student who absolutely cannot afford to buy fresh flowers multiple times a month - but always take care to add your own offerings and flowers on top of whatever they donate. The Fair Folk might accept an offer funded by others, but you know you're safest when you give something of your own.

For this reason, you're one of the "lucky" ones. An English and music double major is practically guaranteed to be stolen away at least every few months, but in your three years here you've only left once. You wear your clothes inside out so often that it becomes more habit than precaution - though you doubt you'll ever truly be used to underwire biting into your skin in a somehow even worse way - and you leave out trinkets even when you're at home, on break, hundreds of miles from any sign of Elsewhere U. You’ve prepped, you’ve prepared, you’ve readied yourself for whatever may attempt to come for you on the way home from your recital, or a poetry reading, or the spring musical.

Yet still, you feel the strangest tug. Be it a spur-of-the-moment detour through the woods to get to class a bit faster or the desire to sit next to Denise (who isn’t Denise, not really, and hasn’t been for nearly two months now) in workshop, you feel more and more drawn to the Elsewhere the closer graduation creeps. You’ve become incredibly invested in your architectural exploits, building bigger and better homes with increasing regularity, and you’ve added a bit of spice to your offerings. You continue to leave small trinkets and creamers, but every once in a while you leave a few lyrics of an original song, or a bit of dialogue from a piece currently in workshop that you  _desperately_  need to get back to editing, or something else equally as personal, special, and, hopefully, intriguing to the Fair Folk. On rare occasions you grow even more desperate, throwing yourself outside all night in a truly desperate plea for something,  _anything_  to happen. To appear.

You despise acknowledging them, but tonight is one of those nights.

It’s a night for music and you sit in the bitter cold beneath the apple tree, bundled up in a periwinkle coat, fingers numb as you pluck at the strings of your guitar. You’ve finally set your favorite poem to a tune, and though your hands shake violently you still manage to hit the proper chords. It takes a moment, a tense one, but it passes and before long you’re humming and singing and swaying with the beat, singing out about the girl you once loved, a long, long time ago. Your tongue slips and sets free your true name but you don’t care, you don’t care, you don’t _care_. The song ends and you leap into the next, stopping for neither breath nor a moment to regroup. Something happens and the world feels almost trance-like as you pour your heart and soul out beneath the apple tree to the sound of a perfectly-tuned guitar and the wind—or something else—rustling the bushes.

Your eye catches a glimmer moving across the strings with you. For once, you leave the ring be and decide to see what happens.

This time, maybe you won’t be coming back.


End file.
